Acute Management
by Trinitas
Summary: In the wake of Chase's spinal cord injury, he and House both have to adapt. A medically realistic AU of "Nobody's Fault." PART 1 of the "Adaptations" series, CH. 3 NOW POSTED.
1. Support Systems

**Acute Management**

**Chapter 1: Support Systems**

A day after the embolectomy, Chase has had an MRI, a complete blood panel, a neurological evaluation involving enough poking and prodding to eliminate whatever shred of dignity incontinence hadn't stolen, and a small pharmacy of meds.

High-dose methylprednisolone to reduce swelling around his spinal cord. Ranitidine to protect against ulcers—he'll probably be on that for several months. Thrice-daily injections of heparin to prevent clots (a measure augmented by compression stockings that he doesn't feel). And morphine for postoperative pain, which works beautifully as an analgesic, but doesn't have the half-hoped-for effect of leaving him stoned enough not to care how much wiring's offline in his central nervous system. He's still painfully aware of being tethered to a bed in ICU by a web of medical apparatus and his own unresponsive lower body.

There's an NG tube and TPN to compensate for his paralyzed gastrointestinal system, and a Foley to decompress his bladder and collect his urine (lost connection to his sacral nerves means it's not uncomfortable, but he'd rather have sensation). A Swan-Ganz catheter in his pulmonary artery, transmitting ECG, pressure and venous oxygenation readings from his heart. A chest tube so any fluid from the thoracotomy can drain. A nasal cannula.

All of it feels like additional restraints, stealing what little mobility he has left.

And just to top off this nightmare, Foreman's called in someone from New York Mercy to assess the incident and decide whether to send House back to prison.

There's a rap on the glass, then a dark-haired woman in a lab coat steps into his room, carrying a clipboard. "Doctor Chase? I'm Doctor Harper. I'm with psychiatry. Are you feeling up to an initial evaluation?"

He considers—he's tired, but his mind is clear—then meets her gaze. "Will it matter if I say no?"

Harper gives him a sympathetic smile and sits down in the visitor's chair beside his bed. "You'll have to talk to me sooner or later," she says. "And I can't make informed recommendations to the rest of your care team until you do."

He may as well cooperate with her. It's not like he has anything better to do than lie around and wait for the next nurse to help move him so he doesn't end up with pressure sores. "Fine."

"Okay then. Have you ever had psychotherapy before?"

"No."

She makes a note on the clipboard. "My specialty is disability issues," she says, making eye contact again. "Basically, I'm here to help you cope with your feelings about your injury so you can make as successful an adjustment as possible."

Right. Talking to a complete stranger about a loss she can't _possibly _understand will make this so much better.

Some of that sentiment must show in his face, because she raises an eyebrow at him. "Not a believer in psychotherapy?"

"Telling you I hate that my legs won't move isn't going to make a difference."

The disagreement he expects from her doesn't come. "What's your specialty?"

"Intensive care."

Before this, the ICU meant mastery. Certainty of his own competence, of how to manage failing systems to keep patients alive and how, sometimes, to save the ones who looked like they shouldn't have had a prayer. Now, it just means the special humiliation of having worked with the staff changing his surgical dressing, feeding him by IV, checking the urine output in his catheter bag, and who'll be managing the meds that get his bowel to work once he's back on solid food.

"Does that make this easier or more difficult?"

Chase shrugs, musters a smirk. "Knowing the protocols and the prognosis helps. The irony probably doesn't."

"You feel hopeful about your prognosis?"

He could. Nothing is certain yet. It's possible—not likely, but possible—that the clot did only minor damage, and what he's experiencing now is just spinal shock. Possible to hope for a full recovery once it resolves.

But that hope would assume a just universe, assume that life is fair. It isn't, and experience tells him that hoping for too much is the most dangerous thing he could do. If he lets himself believe he'll heal from this, walk unaided, and finds out later that he never will…

No. Recovery is going to be painful enough without setting himself up to crash.

"Realistic," he corrects. "We'll know more once the swelling goes down and we can get accurate imaging, but L5 injury gives me a decent chance of walking again." Maybe walking supported by a walking frame, or forearm crutches and orthoses to brace his legs, but walking. For that, he can be grateful. "Doesn't mean there's not permanent damage."

Harper nods. "That's true. But you will be able to adapt."

She doesn't have to tell him that. He's had his life upended before and survived. He also knows, intellectually, that tens of thousands of people with injuries like his and worse are leading fulfilling lives, that they have careers and families. He knows that feelings of depression, frustration, helplessness are normal. He'll feel better with time, and especially with being allowed out of bed and starting to relearn how to move, how to regain his independence.

But knowing that doesn't do anything to make him feel better now. Not when his body's handed him a long list of probable losses he hasn't dared count, and the only person who understands _anything_ of what he's going through could be back in prison tomorrow.

"Can I have a brief description of what happened for the history?"

He'll have to dredge up the rest later, recount the circumstances so the doctor Foreman appointed can judge who and how to punish. For now, he gives facts.

"A patient stabbed me with a scalpel, making a small laceration in my left ventricle. It was repaired surgically. I woke up in PACU and couldn't feel my legs." He draws and releases a breath, reaching for the detached, efficient calm he's always relied on in crisis, but it won't come. "House diagnosed occlusion of the radicular artery. He was right. I had an embolectomy."

"Thank you." She makes a few notes. "You said you've never had psychotherapy. Have you ever had any psychiatric conditions?"

She could probably pull several diagnoses out of an account of his childhood, and he's certain of acute PTSD after he'd killed Dibala. None of it's germane to what's happening now. "No."

Harper's expression says she doesn't believe him, but she can't call him on it. She records the list of his current medications, his basically nonexistent social history, his mother's alcoholism and depression and his father's smoking, and assorted other facts that have nothing to do with his being trapped in this bed. Finally, putting the clipboard aside, she asks, "Have you called anyone to be here with you? A friend?"

"No."

"Are you going to? Or is there anyone?"

"House," he says, half to see her reaction. "If he doesn't go back to prison."

Raised eyebrows, pursed lips, and the reappearance of the clipboard for a few scribbled notes. Then, "You've worked with Doctor House for how long?"

"Nine years." He gestures at the clipboard. "Diagnosing Stockholm Syndrome?"

Harper shakes her head. "You're much better off with any kind of support than with none." Still, she looks concerned. "Best-case, this investigation is unnecessary additional stress. Worst-case…"

Worst-case, revocation of House's parole.

He's handled crises on his own before, and it's not as though he'd be left alone with this. He has an intensivist, a physiatrist, a physiotherapist, an occupational therapist, a psychiatrist, nurses all overseeing his case, all willing to give as much help as they can. But what medical science can do for him is limited.

He wants House here because House knows what it's like to be stuck in a bed, stuck being dependent on others, stuck in a body that doesn't work the way it should and never will again.

Harper could put him in her support group, give him a room of other disabled people to talk to (he supposes he'll resort to that if there's no other choice), but even strangers going though similar experiences would still be strangers.

House will never show him what most people would recognize as concern, never ask how he is or sit at his bedside, but he knows what he's going through and knows _him_. Whatever support he decided to give would be unusual and very probably annoying, but it would be the best thing for him.

"He'll help, if he can be here," Chase says.

"The kind of support you'll need… that's something you think Doctor House would do well?"

Chase smiles wanly. "I don't expect flowers and sympathy. But that's not what I need. That's just what people do when something tragic happens." It's a way of saying they're sorry, acknowledgement that his being crippled is horrible. Not so unlike the wave of concern and advice he'd gotten after Cameron left, really. Well-meaning, but having more to do with their own feelings than with him.

He's got very little patience for that sort of thing.

"And what do you need, Doctor Chase?"

"Right now? To sleep for a while, I think." It's not only an excuse to cut this evaluation short. Between his injuries and the morphine, he's going to fall asleep before much longer.

It'll be a welcome escape.

Harper picks up her clipboard and stands, pausing in the doorway. "Doctor Cofield will probably visit later to ask you about the incident."

To judge what happened so he can place blame. As if choosing someone to condemn will do anything but more damage.

Chase nods. "Thanks for the warning."

He knows that from the outside, House's methods seem like madness, but he'll try to make Cofield understand that they aren't. What happened to him was an aberration, not anyone's fault (it was his own, but he knows better than to say that for the record). House had given him a chance of recovering function, and what looks like callousness is House's particular way of giving a damn.

He's learnt to rely on House's help when things go catastrophically wrong. He doesn't want to find out if he can handle having that taken away along with everything else.

** END.**


	2. No Such Thing as Absolution

**Acute Management**

**Chapter 2: No Such Thing as Absolution**

House storms out of the office-slash-inquisitorial chamber, leaving Cofield, Foreman and all the able-bodied members of his team behind, and heads for the ICU.

'Nobody's fault' is a crap ruling. There's no logic behind it, no better reason than chance good timing on the part of his ex-patient's wife, and Cofield's sudden attack of sentiment. _Get Out of Jail Free_, like this whole fiasco had been a Monopoly game. Like Chase had just drawn the wrong card and had to pay everything in damages. House's mistakes should have been his own to pay for.

Chase should have walked away unscathed.

But Cofield's magnanimous gesture is a better-designed punishment than he'll ever know. House's parole ties him to PPTH, and after this, he _will not_ get himself fired. Because this disaster is a direct result of his decisions, and that means he deserves exactly what he was given: the solitary hell of watching Chase follow in his infarcted, limping footsteps to become Cripple the Second.

Watching him struggle through months of painful, grueling physical rehab. Feeling Chase's grief and anguish echo through his own memory. Seeing him in a wheelchair, on crutches, gimping through the world, being stared at. Knowing the pain and fatigue that will wear him down until he loses the energy to care about anything beyond his own exhaustion.

Dammit! He should have been able to prevent all this. When Chase hadn't posited a theory of his own, of course that meant he'd thought one of the other three was right. Of course he'd wanted to find out. It wouldn't have been the first time Chase had taken initiative and run an extra test. If only he'd told his team, "Keep testing if you want. Just have the patient strapped down in case he goes bonkers," it would've been enough.

Noticing that both his fists are tightly clenched, House steps toward a nearby pillar, bracing himself against it with his free hand. He hooks the cane over that arm so he can extend and flex his fingers against the soreness of a white-knuckled grip. Drawing a deep breath, he leans forward to rest his forehead against the pillar, and slowly exhales.

When he's as ready to move as he's ever going to get, he repositions the cane and starts down the hall, too aware of his own lopsided gait. At least Stacy had only taken one muscle group from him—he'd only lost function on one side.

It's too early to know the full extent of Chase's spinal injury. Even after the swelling subsides, he may have lost everything from L5 down. Plus, recovery from the thoracotomy to patch his heart means no strenuous physical therapy for at least a month. And that could cost him. Big.

There's nothing he can do for Chase that he hasn't already done, no chance of the eleventh-hour realization that this was never really an SCI. Nothing he can cure. Nothing he can give but a worthless apology.

House opens the door to ICU, moving down the hallway until he reaches Chase's room. He peers through the glass, his gaze flitting to the monitors (no anomalies) before settling on Chase. He's half sitting up, supported by pillows and the tilt of the bed, eyes on his own folded hands. There's a grabber tool lying beside his right leg, in case he needs to pull up a rumpled blanket or reach something close to the bedside. No doubt from OT—they have a thing for gadgets.

"The firing wire in my Vicodin," he says as he walks in. "Nice. It went off in front of Cofield, set off the right diagnosis. Tumor lysis syndrome. Patient's gonna live." Solving the case doesn't make up for what happened, but there might be cold comfort in knowing that he hadn't been crippled for nothing.

Chase nods slightly, but doesn't look up. As long as he stays this quiet and closed off, House has nothing specific enough to work with.

"Cofield decided it was nobody's fault you got stabbed." Still no answer. He waits a few more seconds, then says, "He's wrong. I'm sorry."

Chase makes a small, choked sound—maybe something like bitter laughter, maybe an attempt not to cry—then takes a deep breath. Trying for control. Finally, he says quietly, "Don't."

House waits, and after a few seconds, Chase looks up. He may think he's pulled himself together enough to hide his feelings, but he hasn't. Exhaustion, grief, uncertainty, pain… House may as well be reading a book.

Or maybe looking in a mirror.

"House. Just—please. Not now."

House raises an eyebrow. He hadn't expected Chase to be in a chatty mood, but he also hadn't anticipated ambiguity. "Not now because you blame me? Or because you've been too many people's lab rat today?" He gestures at the grabber. "New toy means OT eval."

Chase nods. "To begin with. PT was later." A slight, humorless laugh. "Lots of tests, lots of questions that aren't their business." Half under his breath, he says, "Like they need my life story to do their jobs."

Prying into his history is one of the few things that riles Chase. That explains the frustration. So does the endless poking and prodding, quantifying exactly how much he's lost. "So that's a yes on the lab rat thing?"

"Yeah." Chase releases a deep sigh, closes his eyes for a few seconds, then opens them and looks back up at House. "I want to be left alone. But I don't blame you."

House frowns at him. That doesn't make sense. He's the one who'd put the patient on the diagnostic trial that made him snap. He should have seen this coming.

"Why? This was my fault."

"Oh God," Chase mutters, fatigue shading into exasperation. "It wasn't, and I don't blame you. Can't that be enough? For today, at least?"

He knows better than to believe that. The only reason Chase doesn't hate him right now is that hatred takes energy.'It wasn't your fault and I don't hate you' is just code for 'I'm too tired to argue, but I still want you gone.'

His instinct is to dig, keep asking until he gets a real reason. But the exhaustion he sees in Chase's face is real, and House knows that right now, a demand for answers would be one demand too many.

Fine. He can observe from the hallway, pilfer evaluation results and interrogate therapists in the meantime, and it's not like these answers are time-sensitive. "Yeah," he agrees.

Chase relaxes slightly. "Thank you."

He doesn't want or deserve Chase's gratitude, but he has enough self-control not to snap that at him. Not today. He nods curtly, turns and leaves the ICU, moving toward the elevator.

He'll go back to his office, check if any of Chase's initial test results are available on the hospital network (fewer offices to break into later), and then go to Wilson's and wait for him to come back from the world's most horribly-timed oncology conference.

He scoffs. Wilson will be so happy House isn't going back to prison, so happy to hear the collaborative lie of "nobody's fault."

They can repeat it as many times as they want. It's never going to be true.

**END.**


	3. While You Were Out

**Acute Management**

**Chapter 3: While You Were Out**

House is slumped on the couch in front of Wilson's droning TV, nursing a tumbler of scotch, when he hears Wilson's key in the lock. The door opens and shuts, and Wilson's luggage thuds to the floor.

"Hey!" Wilson says. He's in a good mood, oblivious to what happened in his absence. "I see you got bored while I was gone." House doesn't bother turning around, so Wilson moves toward the couch, already launching into a report on conference drivel. Seeing House's face, he breaks off and shifts from convivial to concerned in point-five seconds.

"What happened?" he asks, sitting down next to him.

"Chase is in ICU with an SCI," House says flatly, looking up from the depths of his scotch. "Occlusion of the radicular artery at L5." He resists the urge to reach for his new, non-pranked bottle of Vicodin. Right now, it wouldn't be for the leg. Instead, he reaches for the remote and turns off the TV. "I diagnosed the clot. Too soon to know anything else."

Wilson nods but stays silent, inviting the rest, and House gives him a thumbnail sketch of the incident and Cofield's inquisition.

"Chase had rigged my Vicodin to explode," he continues. "I got the diagnosis and walked out on Cofield to get my patient treated. Patient's wife came in the next day to add a plea in favor of my process, and Cofield was moved not to send me back to prison. He decided it was nobody's fault."

"Thank God," Wilson says.

"I told him he was a coward."

"What, you _wanted_ to go back to…?" Wilson trails off with a frown, then his expression turns incredulous. "This is last year's insanity all over again, isn't it? You thought you should be punished for wrecking Cuddy's home, and you earned yourself a year in jail. Now Chase was attacked, you feel guilty, and instead of dealing with it—"

"He could've died!" House snaps, slamming his hand down on the sofa's armrest. "He'll be a cripple for the rest of his—"

"—whereas if you'd gone to jail, the scales of justice would balance and he'd be completely healthy and able to walk?" Wilson sighs and lowers his voice. "House. Sometimes tragedies happen. And sometimes, however it offends your view of the universe, there's no one to blame."

"I put that patient on the diagnostic trial that caused his psychotic break."

"You didn't put Chase in the room with him," Wilson says, holding his gaze. "You didn't order Chase to bring in sharp objects. You didn't cause that clot. And there's at least a chance that diagnosing the clot quickly means it's an incomplete injury. There might not even be permanent damage." He starts to reach toward House, then reconsiders and stops himself. "Now. Logically. How is what happened to Chase directly your fault?"

"I should've been able to narrow down the differential without risking a psychotic—"

"I'm not defending your process to you," Wilson says. "If he'd had a psychotic break and no one you care about had gotten hurt, you wouldn't have given a crap."

He stares past Wilson, imagining Chase lying in bed, betrayed by his own legs. He sees Chase's determination to achieve some response—even just a twitch, a hint of feeling—sharpening into desperation and collapsing. He recognizes the grimace of defeat, and that futile attempt to hold back tears.

He remembers the anguish of waking to a thigh cocooned in surgical dressing, a crevasse lined with screaming nerves where most of his right quadriceps should've been. And then endless months of physical therapy, biting down on every stab of agony as he fought to make his _fucking_ _useless_ leg start to bear weight and recover range of motion, knowing it was ruined. That it would never heal, never work right again, no matter how much rehab he did or how many hopeful platitudes the physical therapist tried to sell him. And realizing, as days became weeks and months, that the pain was never going to stop. That _this_ was going to be the rest of his life.

He closes his eyes, willing the memories away. His leg sends up a flare of warning: _There is no "away."_ Massaging his thigh, he refocuses on Wilson. "I told him I was sorry."

"And?"

"And he says it wasn't my fault and he doesn't blame me," House says, and scoffs. "That's the exhaustion talking. He can't even tell a decent lie."

Wilson's earnestly sympathetic look refuses to go away. "Did you consider that he could be telling the truth?"

House gives Wilson a withering glare. "He may never walk again. He may never have enjoyable sex again. Hell, he may never take a dump again without—"

"And all those things would be horrible," Wilson breaks in, "but they still wouldn't be your fault. _He chose_ to do that biopsy. Implicitly, he also chose to accept the risk that the patient would react violently."

"He thought Adams was right," House says. "If it was strep, no risk of the patient going nuts. Just a simple, stupid test to get the answer. He wasn't thinking about risks."

He'd been trained to generate ideas and try to prove them, and to keep going until the patient was either diagnosed or dead. Questions of personal safety didn't factor into that process.

"That doesn't make him less responsible for his decisions. He's not a child you left alone with a scalpel."

"I should've told them to strap the patient down." One simple instruction, and this nightmare would never have happened. "When he didn't have his own theory—"

"—you should have read his mind and stopped him from doing something stupid?" Wilson shakes his head. "Even you can't predict everything, House. People aren't equations. They do unexpected things."

"He's run extra tests before. This wasn't a totally new variable I could never have seen coming."

Wilson takes a deep breath, closes his eyes for a few seconds, then meets House's gaze. "Look, whatever you could or couldn't have foreseen, it happened. And sitting here, arguing in circles about whose fault it was, isn't going to undo it."

Nothing's going to undo it. That's why it's not okay to buy into _nobody's fault_ and move on. Letting it go means dismissing everything Chase has lost.

Even if Chase had been telling the truth and doesn't hate House already, he will. When the searing neuropathic pain and the deep, aching joint and muscle pain never leave—no matter if he lies still, propels a wheelchair or drags himself along on crutches. When a workday he could've breezed through before leaves him ready to collapse. When he's at home alone, in pain, working up the energy to haul himself into bed. When he wakes up from yet another night of lousy sleep, thinks _It's never going to get better,_ and wonders if dragging himself back out of bed is worth the effort it costs him.

"He's going to hate me. Maybe when he gets some feeling back and the neuropathic pain kicks in. Maybe when it hits him that no matter how hard he tries, his body's never going to be normal." He looks down at his lap. "He _should_ hate me."

"You don't know he's going to have pain," Wilson says. "You don't know how much he'll be able to recover."

"I know that at least sixty-five percent of SCI patients have chronic pain," House says. "And I know the odds are next to zero percent that he doesn't have permanent damage." He reaches for his glass and drains the last swallow of scotch. He's had enough to feel the influence of the alcohol, but probably not so much that he can't drive home.

He considers the mostly-full bottle and pours himself another generous serving. Forget driving home. Wilson can call him a cab.

"How much have you had?" Wilson asks, confiscating the bottle and placing it out of House's reach.

House laughs, completely without humor. "Not enough." Alcohol's one more thing that won't fix this—short of drinking himself unconscious, he's not going to feel better—but at least it'll take the edge off.

"Uh-huh. Why do I get the feeling 'enough' would end with you wishing you were dead tomorrow? You need to function. You need to deal with this."

"This _is_ dealing," House says tersely. "Not dealing would be getting thrown back in prison."

Wilson raises his brows cautiously. "So you… don't want to be thrown back in prison?"

"Of course not. I get to watch him turn into me! How could I _possibly_ miss that?"

"He's young. He'll adjust, learn to cope."

Chase is only three years younger than House was when a clot stole _his_ leg.

"If you're just going to lie, shut up and give me back the scotch," House says flatly.

"What do you want me to say? That his life will never be the same? That rehab is going to be painful? That he's going to grieve? You know that. But in the end—"

"In the end, he'll reach the limit of how much he can recover," House breaks in. "And then he'll know how much he'll never get back, how much his life is going to suck. And his idiot doctors will talk about _coping_."

"Why does that make them idiots?" Wilson asks. "You can't think he'd be better off refusing to deal with this."

"It makes them idiots," House says, taking another burning gulp of scotch, "because they have no clue what total lies those stupid platitudes are."

Wilson frowns at him. "Giving him hope is a lie? Assuring him that he can still have a full life—"

"Stupid platitudes like that!" He glares at Wilson. "Those palliative pep talks you're so good at—they're great when people are dying. Give them sympathy and good drugs, encourage their little fantasies of poofy clouds and family reunions. Wanna take a guess why that works?" He doesn't wait for an answer. "Six months, three weeks, whatever. Even if it's excruciating, they get to come to a full and complete stop. All misery over."

"That's your argument? He's not terminal, so he should be told his life won't be worth living?" Wilson shakes his head. "Is that what you wanted to hear after your infarction? 'The rest of your life will be absolute misery, so you might as well get used to it'?"

"False hope is insulting and useless."

"It'll be days, maybe weeks before it's possible to get clear enough imaging for a prognosis. Until then, you don't know it's—"

"I know there was ischemia," House says, voice low. "I know even a little cord cell death does a hell of a lot of damage. And I know what being crippled and in pain does to a life."

There's a silence as those facts kill Wilson's next platitude. Finally, Wilson says, "Say you're right and he ends up in pain, maybe in a wheelchair. All this knowledge of what he's going through… is it just something you're going to torture yourself with, or do you want to help?"

"He has help. There's a whole ICU full of people whose job it is to move his legs and wipe his ass." At Wilson's look, he says, "I'm not _you_, Wilson. I don't do kindness, patience and hand-holding."

"Don't you think he knows that?" Wilson asks. "If he asked you to hold his hand, you'd rule in brain involvement."

"That's the point! There's nothing medical I can do for him. I suck at moral support, and I'm not what you'd call a role model for adjustment." He levels a challenging look at Wilson. "So tell me, how am I even slightly helpful?"

"Empathy. Even if you go in there at your misanthropic worst, he knows you understand what it's like for him to be stuck in that bed."

"Yeah. Me and a whole support group of caring, well-adjusted new gimps," House says.

"True," Wilson says. "But unlike those pleasant, well-adjusted people, you _know_ him. You care about him—and don't even start deflecting. You have to care to manufacture this much guilt."

House rolls his eyes at Wilson and drains his scotch. He wants more booze, but not enough to lever himself off the couch to get it. Yet.

"Look, whether or not you admit giving a damn, the question is the same. Are you going to help?"

"What does 'help' even mean at this point?" House demands. "Go sit in there so he can absorb my magical empathy and still be stuck in the damn bed? There's nothing I can say that'll—"

"Yes," Wilson breaks in. "Go sit in there. Have a real conversation. Show him he matters enough to you that you're doing something besides brooding in your office."

When House doesn't answer, Wilson says quietly, "I couldn't fix your leg. Does that mean being there for you was worthless?"

No. Wilson had refused to be driven away, no matter how much hell House gave him. But Wilson had had the right personality, the right training, the right tangle of complexes to handle emotional fallout. "You seriously think I'm capable of being in there and _not_ making it worse?"

"You were in there with him once and the world didn't end."

"Once. Briefly. And then he kicked me out."

Wilson looks doubtful, but doesn't call him on it.

"The longer you wait to go back in there, the worse you're making it. For him, and for you."

_Objectivity, House,_ Chase's voice says, and House releases a breath. That's what he needs—to get a grip and start thinking with his brain.

A) Avoiding Chase isn't feasible in the long-term. Eventually Chase will be able to transfer into a wheelchair, and from there, if he wants to see House, he'll find a way. B), if House is going to feel guilty no matter where he is, he may as well bring his guilt to Chase's room, where it belongs. And C), Wilson will insist on repeating this conversation every day until House decides to go in and exude empathy all over Chase.

"Fine," he says at last. "I'll go back."

Soonish. Maybe.


End file.
